Redistricting trial wraps up with no decision for weeks

TALLAHASSEE – The two-week trial over Florida's new rules of the road for drawing political boundaries concluded Wednesday with the fate of the first-of-their-kind “non-political” congressional maps in the hands of a Tallahassee judge.

The case has generated a treasure trove of insider political intrigue. But if Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis decides this month to order a reboot of the 2012 map-drawing process, the stakes for voters could be felt for decades.

If Lewis decides the congressional maps were intentionally drawn to help Republicans, he could order the Legislature to re-draw the maps or require a court-overseen process.

Any decision will be quickly shuttled to the Florida Supreme Court, which has repeatedly ruled against parts of the Legislature’s 2012 map-drawing handiwork.

“It’s likely whatever happens here, it’ll be appealed one way or another,” Lewis said from the bench Wednesday.

And invalidating the lines could cause “chaos” for candidates – even if new maps won’t have to be in place until 2016 – because it could lead to unraveling the state legislative political geography, the defeats of more longtime incumbents, and shake up the calculus of which seats candidates seek.

“It would put everybody into a tremendous scramble,” said University of Central Florida political scientist Aubrey Jewett, who called such a scenario “a difficult process to undertake this close to an election.”

Long-term, even GOP control of the Legislature could be eroded.

Both sides say the trial will help decide how Florida’s “Fair Districts” amendments passed by voters in 2010 will be enforced for decades to come.

Lawyers for the League of Women Voters and others challenging the maps have argued lawmakers used a “shadow” process to intentionally draw GOP-friendlier lines.

Coalition lawyers have singled out the meandering seat held by Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville, which they say was intentionally “packed” with minorities by GOP consultants and fed into the public record to make the surrounding seats held by Reps. John Mica, R-Winter Park, Daniel Webster, R-Winter Garden, and others safer.

“The Florida Supreme Court has said if there is any partisan bias it renders the map non-compliant,” plaintiff lawyer David King said in trial.

“If it’s not this case, there will never be one.”

Meanwhile, the defense has couched its case on flawed maps the League also drew, and testimony from longtime redistricting watchers that complying with the mandate for compact districts grew thornier when also attempting to protect minority-voting rights.

“All the plaintiffs have done is put up innuendo and whatever third-parties who are uninvolved have done,” said former Florida Supreme Court Justice Raoul Cantero, a lawyer for the Senate. “They have not shown that anything has affected the drawing of the maps.”

And they point to former Reps. Allen West, R-Plantation, and David Rivera, R-Miami, who lost previously GOP-leaning seats thanks in part to the new maps.

Central Florida representatives from the NAACP have testified that before the Legislature drew a map that elected Brown, they “never saw their representative.”

The congressional map the Legislature adopted in 2012 boosted the African-American voting-age population of Brown’s Jacksonville-to-Orlando district above 50 percent, and the congresswoman made an appearance in court Monday to defend the GOP Legislature’s map-drawing.

The two-week trial has featured top GOP political operatives testifying about how they wanted a “seat at the table” and circulated preferred versions of the maps, with names like “Frankenstein,” “Sputnik,” and “Perfect Pieces.”

Another, Rich Heffley, who worked for Senate President Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, circulated GOP-favored maps to other consultants with the hope that someone would submit them to the Legislature.

Legislative lawyers have retorted that was a product of the historic reforms voters enacted – requiring the first-ever process for Florida allowing the public to submit maps, and then requiring current and former legislative leaders to vouch for them under oath.

“What other people do in the outside process – whether they feel shut out – has nothing to do with the actual activity of the Florida House and Senate,” Cantero said.

One of the biggest bombshells of the trial came courtesy of former Florida State University student Alex Posada -- once praised by GOP lawmakers for maps he supposedly submitted to the Legislature in 2011 – who said under oath he was asked to participate and did not draw any of the maps submitted under his name.

Posada, who now works for an Orlando construction company, said in a deposition last week he never created the alexposada22@gmail.com address used to submit maps and had “zero knowledge” of redistricting emails from his FSU email address.

Those districts appear to closely resemble the final congressional districts lawmakers passed, although House and Senate staffers have testified the Posada maps had little effect on the final lines.

“That map seems to be an orphan. No one wants to claim it,” King said.

And political scientists have testified that the final maps would have been virtually impossible to draw without some intentional partisan bias.

Lewis could take several weeks to rule. If the congressional maps are found unconstitutional, legislative lawyers say they deserve another chance to re-draw them.